I will certainly miss watching you move through each day, from the early morning light reflecting off Hook Mountain, to the last bits of sunset creeping over your tallest buildings.

No longer will seeing your traffic lights, eerily glowing on foggy nights, make me feel part of a suspense thriller or Sherlock Holmes novel.

Your firework displays were always a special treat.

No. We’re not moving away.

It’s just that the long-vacant lot adjacent to our property has been sold and the house to be built on it will block our views of the entire town.

Worse yet, the occupants will be close enough to borrow a cup of sugar, or share a bottle of Grey Poupon mustard without much of a stretch.

We always knew this day would come. We’d taken advantage of these views for years, through the property developer’s misfortune. As long as lots remained available, we had our private perch above town.

According to the floor plan, the master bedroom is on the side of the house facing us. Its bathroom window directly across from ours.

This new homestead will put a cramp on our lifestyle, forcing changes in some long-standing rituals. And, we must surrender the land we’ve cultivated and stewarded – well, invaded really – for years.

This means moving the trampoline fifteen feet closer to our house, transplanting trees and shrubs back to our side of the property line and no more ‘composting’ our leaves and grass clippings into their deep woods. A few chomps of a backhoe bucket will obliterate the stone patio that represents our most egregious trespass.

Of all the adjustments, however, the most disconcerting will be the end of a favorite morning ritual – frenetic chases through the house, usually ‘in-the-buff’, brought about by the reticence of our child, who shall remain nameless, to brush teeth or use the bathroom or to simply get dressed.

Our floor-to-ceiling windows will provide the new neighbors front row seats for these romps. No longer shared solely by the local fauna, I fear the incidences will be misconstrued, perhaps as lewd, at the very least crude.

But who knows, perhaps they will be similarly inclined toward ‘au naturale’ living. Then, though I’ll lose some views of the Nyack’s land and nighttime sky, I might get to see a different type of moon!